The guys over at BGR are griping at Apple for an email sent to a customer under Steve Jobs’s name. At the heart of the issue is a MacBook Pro which sustained water damage. The owner was miffed that it would cost him $300 for Apple to look into repairing it, not knowing if it was possible or not. He emailed Steve about what he considered bad customer service.
Steve emailed back.
This is what happens when your MacBook Pro sustains water damage.They are pro machines and they don’t like water. It sounds like you’re just looking for someone to get mad at other than yourself.
Steve
Ouch. While we agree the tone is terse, we have to side with Apple on this one. MacBook Pros are hardcore machines, very intricate. Anyone who’s taken one apart knows this. Then there is the general labor and insurances involved. $300 sounds reasonable to us.
And if the CEO of a large and influential corporation emails you back personally, even if you don’t like what he has to say, that’s not bad customer service.
Keep water away from your laptops, people.
A nice yes would have been just fine…. steve is such a prick
This is a GREAT response. Now this moron will not waste the time of any more of the Apple support team’s time and they can help their non-moronic customers.
Note to moron: find an Apple repair shop in your area and take it to them. They’ll probably charge you less to tell you you’re an idiot.
I think you guys are missing the point. It’s not whether or not he will have to pay for the repairs, it’s the assessment costing $300.00 that is irritating him.
If a mechanic says to you “sure, I’ll do an assessment on your car, but the assessment will cost you $1000.00 whether I can do the repairs or not” then he’s a crook — a legitimate business person will do the assessment for free then let you know how much it’s going to be.
I”m sorry, no matter how “intricate” you may think the macbook pro is, it’s not that hard to determine what it will take to fix it — it’s not like they are testing every circuit on the mobo individually — if there is a problem with the mobo (which their tools will tell them in all of about 5 minutes), then they’ll replace the whole thing (not solder individual capacitors by hand!).
-olly
You people crack me up. If this was anyone but Apple, you’d be tripping over each other rushing to criticize the company for ripping off its customer for the $300 “we’ll think about fixing it” fee and the screw you email. But since it’s King Jobs and the Holy Court of Cupertino, we instead string up the moron customer by his thumbs for blasphemy. If every MacBook Pro were to explode 10 minutes from now, each taking out the user and a couple of bystanders, we’d see a bunch of comments saying the users were stupid for allowing themselves to be blown up.
Silly rabbits. Let me see…. let’s look at what it will take for the laptop to even be looked at:
1) A customer service talks with him over the phone (10mins)
2) An RMA is generated(2mins)
3) The customer’s laptop is received by shipping with other shipments (30mins)
4) The customer’s laptop is routed to the appropriate department, on-top of other various apple systems, ipod, and the what-not. These all of course having been paid for by customers who know something is broken. (20mins)
5) Laptop is disassembled to verify hardware status (1hr)
6) Basic functionality is tested (30mins)
7) The unit is reassembled (10-20mins)
8)The technician creates a report on their findings which gets routed to a manager (10-20mins)
9) Status is reported back to the customer (10mins)
10) Unit is routed back to shipping (20mins)
11) Unit is repackaged and shipped back to customer (10 mins)
As you can see, there is a large time variance. Apple (as with most if not all businesses)is not in the business of providing free dumb-ass service to it’s customers. This one issue was touched by many employees, each having their own cost structure to the bottom line. Apple probably would have spent more then $300 to have his laptop looked at, only for it be to returned as nothing wrong.
That’s not fair you say… I think if you were in the same position, even as a struggling auto repair specialist, that if someone comes in and takes up your time blabbing about some issues, not only do you spend time with them diagnosing their problem and listening to the nitwit talk like they know about the inner workings of an automobile, you then take a diagnostic measurement to confirm to them, no sir nothing wrong, while you could have been taking care of paying customers and thus earning money, you’d want to charge a minimum fee for taking up your time. This would especially be true if you were a damn good mechanic.. that your opinion means something. Putting a cost in place also ensures that you will most likely be getting their money is something is wrong, because they have money already invested in seeing if it needs to be fixed.
Economics lesson anyone?
If that response was indeed from Steve Jobs… great job Steve. I’m sick and tired of people complaining that they can’t take their electronics into the pool… that they can’t throw their $1500 investment from the rooftops and check email when it lands, that they can’t put it into the microwave with a bag of popcorn on top and play a dvd (with the attached drive of course!) afterwards.
Spot on assessment of looking for someone else to get mad at.
Are there any other companies that charge to just LOOK, not fix, a computer?
I know IBM doesn’t nor does Dell….
Funny how the fanboys are “oh it’s ok since it’s apple blah blah blah”
Apple = Massive Epic FAIL on this one
There is nothing I am not getting and there is no fanboi bias here. The facts are simple: electronic equipment and water do not go together. If you don’t get that and screw up your equipment it will cost money to have it accessed and repaired. If I drive my car into a lake while drunk I will have to get it towed out (which will cost me), I will have to FET a diagnostic check (which will cost me), and I will probably have to spend some time in court (which will cost me). Apple nor any other company should be held responsible in any way for a customer’s stupidity.
AND, if you’re not happy with Apple’s response, find a local computer shop to help you. Just quit whining because you spilled your Appletini on your laptop.
oh, and FET above is obviously a typo so please don’t flame me over that.
If apple were to come pick up the machine, I can see a cost for that, just like a tow truck
and to have a simple diag run, generally every mechanic I’ve been to is free or you can goto AutoZone & they’ll run a check for nothing
I’ve also had the dealer for my car do a free check if there is a problem….
I just can’t see how it’s ok for Apple to charge for everything when their competition does the same service for nothing, but I suppose that’s why Apple has less than 10% of the market share…
warranty does not cover some idiot dropping a cup of water on his laptop. warranty covers defects in workmanship.
when you take car to dealer, most times, if under their warranty, they’ll take a look for free. If not underwarranty, you pay through nose.
Also, free look from someone at autozone. yeah they hire real mechanics who can easily make $40-50 an hour to work a job making $10-15 an hour. I wouldn’t trust a $10hr person with my $20k car. Why don’t I just drop my baby off at target… since they sell baby stuff there I am sure everyone who works there knows how to take care of a baby right?
as far as dell and ibm and lenovo and hp and sony, when you are outside of your warranty you get charged. If you are in warranty but do something that is not covered, they will charge you. I’ve had to pay dell and sony money to fix issues with pc/lt that was out of warranty.
I agree with Steve. And not just because everything he says is always right, but because it actually makes sense. If you’re going to shell out the cash for a pro-machine, then you need to act like a pro and keep it away from the water. And yeah, the guy sounds like a pissed off ape w/no brain. If we wants it fixed for less than he can take it apart himself. He shouldn’t have spilled water on it.
The AutoZone employee doesn’t fix the problem, they diagnose it and then you go from there
My jeep isn’t under warranty but I have had the deal figure out what the problem was, I have also had it done with a Chevy I had, apparently the dealerships care about how their image is perceived, did they fix anything for free? No, but they didn’t charge me to look at the car.
BINGO!!!!!!!! “fix issues” not look at but FIX
Again this is NOT a warranty problem, the guy screwed up, he admitted he screwed up & was willing to pay for the repair if it can be done, but to be charged 300$ to be told if it was a lost cause or could be fixed, but a pay me 300$ to diagnose a problem & then MAYBE we’ll fix it but until you pay up we won’t look at it
JC you are exactly right but, this is steve jobs, and apple, and the lemmings who follow.
some of these posts that call the guy moron, idiot etc.reveal a lot more about the writer than they do about the problems of owning a maverick even if the maverick is fantastic.
the kind of policy that just throws a 300.00 diagnostic charge at the customer who is honest and doesn’t lie about the problem shows the gall of the company. but, the company is apple; and he is steve jobs ;and he has a cult like following as demonstrated by the other posts. without this cult apple wouldn’t be. as other cult leaders have found, there is no future. reasonable people may be tempted but usually go mainstream. maby the cult will bite the apple or have some kool aid but, this too shall pass.
I don’t know of a car dealer that does ANYTHING for free. Sure, they “diagnose” the problem and estimate what the costs of the repair will be. Translation: they listen to what you tell them and then guess how much it will cost and then they get to work. Once they are inside your engine they find ten more things wrong with it and call to tell you it’s going to be $1850 instead of the $340 they originally thought. You can then OK the extra work or get your non-repaired car back for the $340 originally quoted. Oh, and you should probably get you oil changed for $35.
Look, the laptop doesn’t need diagnosis. You know what happened to it. Pay the $300, get it fixed and be done with it. And if Apple can’t fix it, then buy a new one and don’t spill water on it. Most people will pretend to do a “FREE” diagnosis and then tell you your machine is dead and make you buy a new one.
If you don’t like the fact that Apple charges for service then go to a local shop.
Once again the apologists wait in line to kiss the hairy egotistic butts of the corporate elite. Steve Jobs is not your friend – frankly he doesn’t give a crap about you guys. Why do you defend him ? Let me give an example of how the world is dividing. Those that can charge three hundred dollars for nothing. You can spend a good 2 hrs waiting for a tech to help someone with an ipod while you wait to have your 2,700 dollar MBP. There are no priorities at Apple or any other company they don’t give a byte about your problems. OIl companies make 17,000,000,000 in profit and you suffer by buying less food. Oh well go ahead and make apologies for them also. You people are so gullible and – yes – they are not your friends.
Hey,
Why not get a different warranty next time instead of apple care? I hear bestbuy will cover “accidental” damage. and there’s also a warranty company that is affiliated with ebay that sounds like it has a fantastic warranty , cheaper price and for 50 dollars more they will cover ” accidental damage” such as this. That’s going to be the way I go next time. I have a lot of apple computers and have bought apple care every time. But they would not cover my lcd screen that my daughter accidentally elbowed. Said they’d charge me 1200 to fix it . No way said I , I could buy a whole new computer for that much. then they called back and offered to do it for 600. I said no thanks!! Got on ebay. ordered a screen that I was very careful to make sure was the right one for my computer. Paid a little extra in order to buy from an ebay with a near spotless rep and tons of sales. Researched how to install it. (Note: You do NOT have to take the whole computer apart to install one) Had the new screen installed in 5 minutes or so. Screen looks good and I’m only out 133 dollars. P.S.. Local apple service store was going to install it for 90 dollars then backed out. Another apple authorized servicer in the area said they’d install it for 240 dollars as it was a two hour labor charge and labor was 120 an hour. They want you to think you have to take the whole machine apart. NOT!!!!!!I am feeling very proud of myself right now for saving a ton of money and have a beautiful computer to play with once more. The warranty company ( I just looked it up) is a squaretrade.com they will do warranties on used items bought off of ebay or items bought new from any retailer. I don’t work for them. and have never used their service as yet(just found out about it a few days a go but it sounds like a great way to go. Be part of the solution! Not part of the problem!
Here is the thing, Water damage voids the warranty on all apple products, if it has water damage they don’t even take it in because most of the time objects with water damage are beyond any kind of economical repair.
They are most likely charging the guy it because what is he is asking is to take a product not covered by the warranty into a shop to see if they can repair it(possibly under warranty), because the guy wants to see if he can get a freebie from apple. The guy just sounds like a dick, everyone knows that stevie jobs is one, but he is totally right in this case.
I work as the head technician at Staples, and generally I will look at someone’s computer for free. If there was liquid damage (which has come in many times), I will do a basic test: try turning it on, see if anything shows up (any lights, etc), but I won’t go into testing hardware unless they cough up the diagnostic fee. It was their fault, it is most likely broken, and I have many other customers to get to – I can’t be working on someone’s accident for free instead. Apple has to pay each person who gets involved – those in on-the-phone tech support, the technicians themselves, the people in the mail centers, and they have to pay for the equipment and deal with having another laptop in the way of paying customers. $300 may be a lot, but if you spilled water on it and it’s not a question of whose fault it was, you are completely responsible for your mistake.
Steve jobs was rude in the way he said it. But their policy is fair.
fags sure got told